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After weeks of closure rumors and President Donald Trump pushing to shutter the U.S. Department of Education “immediately,” his education secretary nominee Thursday offered the strongest statement so far that the fate of the agency rests with Congress.

“It clearly cannot be shut down without it,” Linda McMahon said during a confirmation hearing before the Senate education committee. “We’d like to do this right. We’d like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with.”

During the nearly three-hour session, frequently disrupted by protestors opposed to her nomination, McMahon offered a far less combative tone than some of the president’s other lieutenants in recent days, voicing support for maintaining funding for most major education programs, including Title I and special education. 

The apparent discrepancy has fed a sense of whiplash. Just yesterday, Trump named North Dakota state Superintendent Kirsten Baesler as assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education after previously nominating former Tennessee education chief Penny Schwinn as deputy secretary. Both are well regarded, even among many Democrats. 

But also this week, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency decimated the department’s research arm and continues to comb through contracts to identify what it considers waste and fraud. On Tuesday, Trump called the department “a con job.” 

During the hearing, Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire described the current state of play as “very elegant gaslighting.” 

“I am going to take you at your word that you will enforce the law,” Hassan told McMahon. “Three weeks ago, the president unilaterally cut all federal grants by issuing an indefinite freeze. That’s an unconstitutional, and yes illegal, action.”

Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington and former head of the committee, put McMahon on the spot over how she might answer to both Congress and the White House. 

“What will you do if the president or Elon Musk tells you not to spend the money Congress has appropriated?” Murray asked.

And Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, warned McMahon that federal law would limit her from restricting curriculum topics Trump opposes. 

“You may be in a position where you are not able to prohibit teachers from discussing LGBTQ issues with students,” she said. 

McMahon came down on the side of local control.

“The federal government is not the school board here, if you will, for our nation’s schools,” she said.

Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana, a Republican, noted that some of the protesters who interrupted testimony in the hearing room said they were teachers.

“Can you imagine … these people teaching our kids in classrooms across America?” he asked. “I wanna get politics out of the classroom. I want political flags and political statements and ideologies out of the classroom.”

While she offered less barbed rhetoric than Trump or Musk, McMahon voiced support for what she called DOGE’s “audit.”

“It is worthwhile to take a look at the programs before money goes out the door,” she said. “It’s much easier to stop the money that’s going out the door than it is to call it back.” 

McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, is one of 13 billionaires tapped to lead Trump’s administration. In her comments Thursday, she held tightly to Trump’s key education priorities — advancing private school choice, preventing trans students from competing in sports consistent with their gender identity and fighting antisemitism. 

“If I am confirmed, the department will not stand idly by while Jewish students are attacked and discriminated against,” she said. 

But her responses offered few details and at times demonstrated a lack of understanding of the laws she’d be responsible for enforcing.

Currently chair of the America First Policy Institute, a far-right think tank, she stumbled when Murray asked her to identify the provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the overarching K-12 education law that requires annual assessments and accountability for student performance. And she appeared to support the more expansive definition of sexual misconduct embraced by the Biden administration rather than the 2020 Title IX rule the department is now slated to reinstate. 

“I think sexual harassment should be prohibited in any case,” she said.  

She expressed support for rolling back Biden’s focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, which the Trump administration has already demonstrated by placing employees connected to DEI on administrative leave. But when Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, from her home state of Connecticut, explained that the president’s stance against DEI could prompt schools to stop teaching African American history, she said Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and Black History Month should be celebrated. 

‘Anti-public education policies’

Despite her inexperience in education, McMahon has been far less controversial than some of Trump’s cabinet choices, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was confirmed Thursday, and Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist who some worry will compromise children’s health, and Hegseth has faced allegations of sexual misconduct and drinking on the job as a former Fox News host. 

After two failed bids for the Senate, McMahon, whose confirmation is expected to advance through the committee next Thursday, led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. But she’s better known for turning WWE into a $9 billion enterprise with her now-estranged husband Vince McMahon.

Her confirmation took longer to schedule than those of most other cabinet nominees as the Senate education committee waited for her to complete ethics paperwork detailing vast financial assets and ties to far-right organizations. 

As a board member of Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs the president’s Truth Social platform, she earns $18,400 quarterly. As Politico reported, a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows she received stock in the company worth more than $800,000 in late January. She is also on the advisory council for the Daily Caller, a conservative media outlet that has given her favorable coverage. 

“I have concerns about her role in pushing a lot of anti-public school, anti-public education policies,” Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, an advocacy organization, told The 74. The Daily Caller often criticized Biden’s education agenda and promoted private school choice. 

If confirmed, McMahon, whose net worth is over $ 3 billion, has promised to step down from those positions, forfeit any shares in Truth Social that she doesn’t yet fully own and divest from those that she does within three months. She also earns interest income from education-related municipal bonds that fund school construction across the country and has pledged to divest from those programs as well.

For some Democrats, McMahon elicits a sense of deja vu. 

“I don’t think it would be that different from [Betsy] DeVos,” said Oregon Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, ranking member of an education subcommittee in the House. Bonamici was among the members of Congress who attempted to meet with department staff last week to discuss DOGE’s activities, only to be denied entry to the building. 

“There’s no question that we still have work to do with our public education system,” she said. “What message do we send around the country to the parents, to the world, that we’re shutting down the Department of Education?”

But those who support her nomination described her as prepared.

“I think it went well,” said Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the libertarian Cato Institute. “The focus wasn’t really on her, but Trump policies and DOGE, so I see no reason she won’t be confirmed.”

One Trump supporter said that underneath the chaos is an agenda to focus the department on four key priorities — eliminating DEI, cutting waste, giving more power over education to the states and expanding school choice. In this view, that is why Trump is continuing to nominate staff for top policy positions despite his caustic words.

“The President is moving on several fronts at once, so it’s easy to conflate actions as if everything is designed to ‘close down the department,’ ” said Jim Blew, a former department official under DeVos and co-founder of the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute, a think tank. “He needs a strong array of political appointees in key positions to make all four parts of his vision happen.”

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